The present invention relates to dump trucks and more particularly to dump bodies with means for tilting of the body to either the left side, right side or towards the rear of the vehicle. The present invention further relates to means for spreading granular material onto roadways from a dump truck body, and more particularly to dump trucks having spreader attachments fed through body tilting.
Dump trucks are commonly used for distributing granular or pulverunent material, such as salt, calcium chloride or sand, onto icy road surfaces. This is commonly accomplished by attaching a spreader to the back end of the truck bed adjacent the outlet opening in the tailgate of the bed. The truck is then driven down a roadway with the bed tilted upwards in order to keep the outlet and spreader provided with the material to be distributed. Dump trucks utilized for the spreading of materials on roadways have a body which tilts towards the back end of the vehicle. Driving with the body tilted in such a manner shifts the center of gravity of the truck and impairs visibility. Also, due to the great height to which the front of the body is raised, tilting of the body presents an impact hazard to low wires, bridges or other obstacles.
Previous arrangements for dispensing with the truckbed in a horizontal position are also known, and have included non-tiltable beds with a bottom wall which slopes sharply upward and away from the bed outlet. This arrangement requires extremely high sidewalls to obtain the same volume capacity as a flat-bottom dumpbed, and wastes a considerable volume of space on the truck.
Other arrangements for dispensing from a flatbottom dumpbed without tilting include having a person standing in the bed and manually shoveling material to the outlet. This is not only very inefficient, but also very hazardous on a moving vehicle. Mechanical devices for moving material toward the outlet have also been proposed. However, these devices require extensive time for installation and removal, thereby making it difficult to convert the truck to conventional use when the ice and snow spreading season is completed.
Three-way dumpbodies are in common use in Europe and have been attempted to be utilized in the United States. These dump trucks suffer from a number of disadvantages. In order to accomodate the three-way tilt capability, the trucks have a significantally higher center of gravity, thereby causing greater instability during the shifting of the center of gravity upon tilting of the dumpbed.
One example of a three-way dump truck is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 2,953,408 to Koenig. The Koenig body suffers from all the disadvantages attendant other three-way dumpbodies known in the prior art. Koenig is also limited in teaching only a means for emptying of a truck bed in three directions, and does not teach the unique aspects of the present invention, and will not accomodate the highly-advantageous spreading mechanism taught by the present invention.